WORLD : Poles to Close Convent, Israel Says
Poland has told Israel it will intervene to remove a Roman Catholic convent from the site of the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said today.
A major source of bitterness between Catholics and Jews, the issue came to a head last week when Polish workers attacked American Jews protesting against the Carmelite convent on a site where 4 million prisoners, mainly Jews, were exterminated by the Germans during World War II.
Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Majewski gave the pledge to the head of Israel’s diplomatic mission in Warsaw at a meeting Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alon Liel told reporters. Under an unfulfilled agreement between the Polish church and the World Jewish Congress, the convent established in 1984 was to have been evacuated by last February.
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